A Glimpse of My Soul
by Riley Lee
Summary: Clint has never seen a dæmon in his life. Nope, never, not even that time after the Chitauri Invasion when he was being held captive for his crimes against humanity. That bird, eagle, falcon, whatever it was, it was just a delusion from stress mixed in with the knowledge that Coulson had died. But he had saw a glimpse of his soul, not that Clint ever acknowledge it. Sequel fic.


The Tesseract, as Doctor Selvig once said, showed people so much. It reveals knowledge, it was truth. Loki had never understond what the good doctor had been trying to explain to him, but he had put up a good pretense of indulgent. The god had even gone as far as asking what the Tesseract had shown Clint, playing the part of being subjected by the Tessearact's power like the rest of them. Not that Hawkeye believed him for one moment, he hung out with the Black Widow enough to pick up on people's tells to some degree and Loki was clearly acting. However, because of the lack of self-preservation instincts and because of his current state of mind, Clint had told the god that the cube had shown him his next target.

Clinton Francis Barton hadn't told the truth.

He hadn't lied either.

Clint told him the truth; he just didn't tell Loki the whole truth. The Tesseract had shown him a multitude of things, secrets of the universe which he could barely understand when he was standing next to the glowing cube and the Tesseract's influence was pulsating through his veins. Yet when he was away from the Tesseract, those secrets became like mercury. They were still within his mind, solid and real like the liquid metal, yet every time he tried to call upon that knowledge, the secrets tumbled out of his metaphorical hands like water. Not to mention, those secrets appeared to be poisonous to his health. The more he tried to remember what the Tesseract had shown him, the more his head hurt to the point he expected his head was going to explode. It was even easier not to think about it, especially when under Loki's control. So, he didn't.

During his stint as Loki's enthrall, Clint never really focused on the Tesseract. He ignored Dr. Selvig rambling on and on about the knowledge of space travel imparted on him by the Tesseract as the man built the device to harness the cube's power. There was no need for him to know those secrets; Clint already had a set of Tesseract Secrets of his very own and his job as Loki's enthrall didn't require any of those secrets either. Loki ordered him to guard and protect the doctor and the device; then, he didn't even have to do that. Rather, he had to provide the god with a distraction and extraction from the Helicarrier, the Tesseract and her secrets as far from him as possible. Afterwards was just one massive cluster fuck of a situation, one that had required his full attention and nothing less. The universe's secrets were thrown to the back of his mind, where they would stay untouched for the rest of his life if Clint had any say about his life.

His set of Tesseract Secrets had other ideas.

However, the Tesseract's secrets were the last thing on his mind when Loki's enthrall broke over him. Loki and the invading Chitauri were his top priority. What was more was that the secrets of the universe were knocked from his conscious mind, probably somewhat due to Natasha's cognitive recalibration. That said nothing about his unconscious mind though. What knowledge left by the Tesseract was still within him, he knew things that the universe tried to hid; something which Clint had not noticed, not even months later. Not that anyone could blame him, well, that was if he told anyone of his problems, which he never did. Instead, the archer went on with his life as a member of S.H.I.E.L.D. or at least he tried to go on with his life. The injunction filed against him by the World Council for his part in the Chitauri invasion made life difficult.

When he had first been confronted with his actions as Loki's thrall, Clint thought he deserved any disciplinary action taken against him as he watched himself mercilessly takedown three agents. No matter what anyone could say, he was responsible for those agents' deaths, at least practically. He wasn't stupid enough to take credit for Loki's work. So when he had been approached by a group of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents after he had helped secured Thor's departure with the prisoner Loki, he had willingly gone with the group.

The archer hadn't even resisted at the time. He was too tired, emotionally and physically to care. Clint had gone with the group; let them disarm him of all his weapons as per standard operating procedure. He was going to face the penalty for his actions with no excuses. But he was only going to atone for his actions. He was not going to be responsible for Loki's actions; neither was he going to be liable for anything to do with the Chitauri invasion. So when the agents had tried to strip him of his clothes, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s SOP for only the most dangerous criminals, Clint began to resist. Adding insult to injury, the agents hadn't even given him the standard coverall for prisoners when they threw him one of the holding cells.

At first, he had felt righteous angry at the way that the World Council was treating him. Clint didn't have to be Tony Stark to figure out what was going on. They needed someone to take the fall, and with Thor taking Loki back to Asgard, the real perpetrator wasn't an option. So they were going after someone they could; he figured that they had already tried to go after Fury or Hill, but hadn't succeeded. Hence, his neck was now on the line. Further condemning against him was the video footage of him assisting Loki. No matter how true it was, being mind controlled was not a likely defense that would hold up in the standard court of law.

During the first day in the holding cell, Clint paced the length of the cell. His feet assaulting the ground and whenever he passed the poor excuse for a bed, his fists would assault the sorely lacking bedding. He took great pleasure in flipping the surveillance cameras off, but that was before he got feed up in having someone constantly watch his naked ass and broke the cameras he could while covering up the ones he couldn't. When some S.H.I.E.L.D. agent he didn't even see pushed his meal through the slot on the floor, the archer just hurled the tray across the cell. The food splattered against the wall and scattered messily across the floor. Still, Clint paced the length of the cell during the whole evening and well into the night.

However, as the angry receded and the exhaustion set in, Clint couldn't help but let the memories of the video feed of him wreak havoc on the Helicarrier seize his mind. The more he remembered himself on the little screen slaughtering those he called co-workers, the more he felt he deserved his penance once again. By the second day, the depression had set in and the pacing was a thing of the past. In place of the pacing, Clint sat hunched in the furthest corner away from the door, hidden by the cot. Never once moving on the second day, not even when his meals were slide through the slot in the door. The third day could find him in the same exact position as the second day with only one difference. He was no longer plagued by just the memories of the damnation of a video, but of _all_ of his mistakes he had ever made in his life in _excruciating_ detail.

Especially what had happen to Coulson.

Coulson had been the one to pull him out of the shit he had gotten himself into before S.H.I.E.L.D., the man had been the one to convince Fury that Clint wasn't a waste of space and could be useful. Coulson had been the first person to believe in him and Clint had let the man down. He was responsible for the man's death.

"Sorry Coulson…I guess I couldn't live up to your expectation," Clint whispered to himself, his voice dry and hoarse from the lack of use and lack of water. Although, it did nothing to cover up the faint sound of ruffling feathers, causing him to hunch his shoulder over his ear hoping to block out the sounds of freedom he was denied. The archer felt defeated as he stared at his hands. He could almost see the blood on his hands, dripping from his fingers. If he stared hard enough, he could see the droplets of blood splash down onto his legs, staining them. Staining his body with Coulson's blood, where he could never get rid of his failure.

The flapping of wings echoed in the small cell, mocking Clint. He was Hawkeye, the Messenger of S.H.I.E.L.D. as Barbara (fuck, Barbara had been one of the agents killed during the Helicarrier attack) had often teased him about. Barbara had been the senior agent assigned to assist with his introduction to S.H.I.E.L.D. She had been his mentor and friend, the one to finally bestow a codename on him. She loved to regale him with stories of how hawks were often seen as messengers of the gods, of the intelligent nature associated with hawks and how they symbolized freedom. Yet, now the Messenger of S.H.I.E.L.D., the mighty Hawkeye was nothing more than a caged bird being denied his freedom. The loud flapping of wings coming from outside his cell kept reminding him of that fact.

But being denied his freedom was better than the being dead. Or at least, that was what he kept telling himself. He had helped take the lives of three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, critically injured fourteen others and was indirectly linked to the deaths of a number of other agents. Most notably of which were Barbara and Coulson. Clint deserved what he got. He even went so far as to start iterating his failings out loud; which was when the archer was dived bombed by a mass of feathers.

Instinctively, he covered his head with his arms, trying to shield his vulnerable skin (which at the point was pretty much all of him without his clothes but his head and family jewels took priority). His actions were unnecessary since there were no further attacks from the feathered fiend. Clint wasn't about to take the chase of looking up though, some birds were known to attacked anything that was even remotely shiny and he wasn't about to risk his eyes being pecked out. Seeing how he had four other senses to work with than just his eyes, the archer concentrated on his hearing, listening for the ruffling of feathers he had so carelessly ignored before.

"Idiot." The feminine voiced huffed out indignantly, as if he had offended the speaker and it was very likely he probably did at some point. There was a familiarity to the voice which immediately put him at ease, yet Clint couldn't put a name to the voice for the life of him. The frustration at not being able even put a face with the voice had him tentatively peeking out between his arms, wary of the loss bird in his cell. A cell that was peculiarly empty with the only door sealed firmly shut and only sickly yellow florescent bulbs for light.

"Fuck," Clint expressed as realization hit him. He was hallucinating, that was the only explanation for it, since there were no goddamn windows in his cell. He hadn't had anything to eat in over three days, which wasn't a record of his, not by a long shot. However, the lack of water was the problem. Or it could have been the lack of sleep. Lack of sleep could cause psychiatric problems such as paranoia and hallucination, the S.H.I.E.L.D. medical training that Barbara and Coulson had forced him to go to had at least taught him that much. Although, he had so much fun at that seminar, the speaker had even stormed out of the room halfway through and they had to get another doctor to finish the rest of the session.

And now he couldn't even focus. Oh, and his head was spinning too.

Hanging his head low to keep from passing out or throwing up, Clint reiterated what was becoming his favorite word. "Fuck."

"That's no way to greet the person saving your ass," the feminine voice spoke evenly. Yet the archer could immediately put a name and face to this voice. So when he turned and peaked over the cot to look at the door, Clint knew he wasn't hallucinating. Not with the beautiful but deadly Black Widow standing in the doorway. "Again. And may I point out this is Thailand all over again."

A bundle of clothes was thrown at his head with amazing accuracy as the woman sauntered into the room with such confidences and sex appeal that any other man would have been aroused. Clint, on the other hand, knew the Black Widow well enough to know that she was very agitated. In Natasha language, that meant she was looking to kill, or at the very least maim, someone and that thought had any arousal which he might have felt fleeing in fear. Thankfully, the Black Widow's was not there to kill him. At least he hoped not.

"I had clothes then," Clint insisted, using the cot at his side to pull himself up. Natasha gracefully ignored his shaking hands as he leaned up against the wall to steady himself.

"Socks really do not count," the redhead maintained, slinking down on to the cot and arranging herself into a comfortable position. Albeit, a Black Widow comfortable position was downright sexy for other woman, but Clint thought she looked even better out of her Black Widow suit and in lose sweatpants and an oversized shirt while lounging on Coulson's couch reading reports. And there went his wondering again…he really needed to get some sleep (or his head checked but that involved doctors and he didn't like doctors).

"There was a handkerchief too," the archer reminded his partner, pulling on the pants she brought him. Black, not to loose and not too tight, just the way he liked his clothing. He should have known Natasha would know his preferences with how long they had been partners.

Clint could feel Natasha's eyes avidly rolling over every inch of his body well he pulled on the clothing, assessing his body for any new injuries. Smartly, Clint chose not to said anything and ignore her protectiveness. Instead, he went on with the well-rehearsed dialogue that was common practice between the two, which was waiting for Natasha's next barb.

"That was steaming the flow of blood around your head wound, which, again, does not count. Besides, at least this time, I have the proper authority to drag your ass back out of here."

And there was the small little smirk that was his queue to continue down a slippery-slope that he could never hope to win. However, the last part was what had Clint actually surprised and he almost paused while pulling on his shirt, his eyes momentarily averted away from Natasha's intense green ones. "I didn't think the World Council would give up that easily."

"They didn't." This time, the archer did pause in disbelief, but Natasha kept on talking like she hadn't noticed his confusion. "They couldn't hold you, not without substantial proof since all of New York is currently holding us up on a rather high pedestal for saving the world."

"The fuck?" Clint barked out, his mind becoming razor sharp at the information and his full attention diverted to the redhead. He knew they had proof, he had seen the damned tapes. "They have proof. They have video, multiple videos of… I've seen them."

A tablet was tossed at him, and if it wasn't for muscle memory and his reflexes, he would have dropped the thing. As it was, Clint just flicked the tablet on and played the video opened in the current window. The sound blared in the currently silent room, his eyes never once leaving the images playing before his eyes. "That…is that Jeremy Renner? What the fuck?"

"That's what the tapes show," Natasha stressed out, pushing herself to her feet and walking over to his trembling form. She gently tugged the still playing tablet out of his hands and turned it off, yet Clint's eyes never left his hands. "All the tapes and data feeds."

Clint just let out a sigh and even he wasn't sure if it was on of relief or from fatigue before looking up into the green eyes. "Thanks Nat."

"It wasn't me," the hasty denial had the tension in the room which had been building up to instantly dissipate and Clint couldn't help the way the corner of his lips tried to tug upwards.

"Uh-huh, sure it wasn't," the archer said, finally giving into the twitching of his face muscle and grinned at his partner. Just for good measure, he gave her a totally not inconspicuous wink and started to make his way out of the holding cell, expecting Natasha to follow suit. However, when he was on the other side of the doorway, he realized that she hadn't even moved and was standing in the same spot, staring blankly at the doorway. "Uh, Nat?"

"I'm serious." That voice, the one the Black Widow used in grim situations, had the tension which had drained right out of Clint's mind to snap right back in place. But that was nothing compared to how, Hawkeye's body reacted instinctively to that voice, his muscles tensing up and his hand itching for his bow and an arrow. A deceptively gentle hand, grabbed his twitching hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, its owner having crossed the cell and now stood next to him in the hallway without even a sound. "It wasn't me. I didn't even know you were down here until three hours ago."

The information had Clint reeling back, his hand tightening around Natasha's hand. There was only three people in the world who he knew of who would go through the trouble of helping him. Only three people in the world that cared about what happened to him and liked him enough to go through the trouble to save his ass. One of three people was currently holding his hand and hadn't had the chance to help him. The other two were killed in the Chitauri Invasion. There was no one else in the world Clint knew of who would be willing to put their neck on the line to save his ass. S.H.I.E.L.D. threw him to the wolves, Fury was too caught up in his own agenda to risk anything and Hill was too straight-laced to even think about altering the video feeds.

Moreover, whoever had decided to assist Clint (for whatever reason, Clint could not even comprehend) had to have gone through a hell of a lot of trouble to get into _S.H.I.E.L.D._'s mainframe to alter all the video feeds in the first place. Whoever had been able to accomplish such a task, which all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s cyber department insisted was impossible, had to have been the world's best hacker. The person probably lived their life sitting in front of multiple computer screens in the dark basement of their parent's house.

Clint opened his mouth to voice his most likely delusional thought process (and he probably should eat something and get some sleep soon), but what words he did say were drowned out.

"Hey! Scary assassins!" Tony Stark exclaimed cheerfully, coming around the corner and smiled brightly when the two looked the playboy's way. Natasha quickly let go of Clint's hand and they both compose themselves before Stark could say anything. Not that he had noticed the somewhat compromising position (at least compromising for the two assassins), seeing as he was too busy chatting away. The man didn't even seem to notice that neither Clint nor Natasha was actually listening to a word he was saying.

"Stark, what is it you need now?" Natasha demanded her voice flat but with just the right amount of threat hinted to get Stark to stop talking. He literally came to a stuttering halt midsentence and the nonexistent smirk on Natasha's face told Clint that she was rather proud of that fact. Not everyone could get _the_ Tony Stark to stop talking. From what he heard of the man, Stark liked to hear his own voice way too much and was rarely quiet.

Gathering his composure, Stark flipped up his sunglasses to rest on the top of his head, huffing in annoyance. "Nothing, nothing," the billionaire waved them off as he proceeded to walk by them in the small corridor. "I just thought I would inform you of a kidnapping of one of your agents. But since you don't seem to care..."

Black Widow's arm lashed out, grabbing hold of the man's arm as he tried to pass. The genius jerked at the sudden contact and Clint could visible see Stark forcing himself to relax in Natasha's grip. If the circumstances weren't so dire, he would have almost felt something for the man. He knew about the abduction by terrorist in Afghanistan and how Stark had been held prisoner for three months. Clint knew from experience just what Afghani terrorists were capable of; however, with the harsh accusations Stark was throwing around, Hawkeye was going to ignore the reaction in favor of obtaining more information.

"Who? Where? When?" the words left his mouth on their own accord, his mind forcing him to focus on something else, something where he could be useful instead of dwelling in the past. Clint needed to redeem himself, not only to the world, but to himself too.

"Who, as in who was kidnapped?" Stark asked casually, prying Natasha's fingers off of his arm with his free hand. "Or who was it that was the kidnapper?"

"Stark, this in no time for one of your jokes," the Black Widow all but growled out as she released the genius (half-way) voluntarily. The show of emotion had Clint flicking his eyes briefly towards Natasha in surprise. No one he knew could get such a rise out of the infamous Black Widow as Stark just had with so few words, not even him. "Tell us what is going on."

Stark just adjusted his sleeve and brushed imaginary lint from his perfectly press Armani suit he was wearing. A predatory smirk curling to life on his face and Clint would have been shuddering in terror if he hadn't become an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and been surrounded by people like Coulson and the Black Widow.

"Who?" the predatory smirk got even bigger; his eyes glistened before they were covered up as his sunglasses were pushed into place. "Me. Where? The Helicarrier. When? In about ten minutes. I just thought you would like a friendly warning that I was going to be taking Coulson back to the tower. For a guy who is seemingly dead, he sure needs a lot of doctors. But hey, if you don't want to help me liberate the man from the inferior medical care and get him to my own personal staff of the best doctors in the world, that's your decision. I'll just let you go on about your day."

Stark by that point, had gotten to the end of the hallway and was almost out of sight when his words completely sunk in to the stunned agents. By the time Stark turned the corner, he had two assassins flanking either side of him as if they were bodyguards. He strolled through the Helicarrier like he owned it and any agent who thought to try and stop him didn't dare. No sane person dared to get in billionaire's way when both the Black Widow's and Hawkeye's glaring eyes landed on them. They were not in the mood to deal with anyone at the moment, not if what Stark had said held any truth.

And it did.

Stark lead both the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents through a maze of hallways and corridors into a part of the Helicarrier that neither of them had seen before. There was no constant hustle and bustle of personnel going throughout the main corridors. Actually, there was very few people that they passed by and none of them were wearing the standard S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform. In fact, the only two people they did pass were wearing white lab coats. The second of which was a small meek looking of a man walking out of low-key ordinary door, which was od considering all other doors on the Helicarrier were electronic and this one had a door knob.

When Meek Lab Coat turned around, having locked the door he came out of, he all about jumped as he came face to face with Tony Stark. He dropped the clipboard he was holding when he noticed Hawkeye and Black Widow standing behind him, stuttering and gasping for breath.

"Key," Stark stated, holding out his hand and waited impatiently for said object to be deposited into his awaiting hand. Meek Lab Coat tried to protest, but twin glares from Black Widow and Hawkeye had the key in Stark's hand. "Now shoo, you're not needed."

Meek Lab Coat jerk his hand back, and for a split second, Clint swore he saw a grey mouse run up along the man's arm squeaking in terror. The moment he looked back, the mouse was gone and so was Meek Lab Coat as he ran down the hall. Stark huffed at the weakling as he unlocked the door and opened it with a flourish.

"Sage!" the feminine voice from his cell squawked as a rush of feathers surged pass him, Clint saw what he thought was a falcon or maybe an eagle fly pass him. The thing came to a soft landing, perching on the back of the chair closest to the bed and snuggling up next to what he knew was a white owl. In spite of the unusual appearance of birds in the Helicarrier, Clint only had eyes for the figure lying immobile on the bed; flow of tubes and wires hooking the person on the bed to the various beeping machines around the room.

The chart hanging off the end of the bed proclaimed the patient to be Agent Philip M. Coulson, but no one paid it any heed. They all knew who this man was. Although, Natasha did flip through the file to find out that Coulson was being kept in a medically induced coma for health reasons and probably to keep the Avengers from finding him. She muttered something in Russian, something that Clint knew he should know, but he wasn't really listening. He didn't even noticed when she left, threatening Fury in Russian and Stark following her out of morbid glee.

All Clint could focus on was Coulson, lying on the bed, breathing steady and _alive_. Clint still had two (three if he counted his unknown mystery rescuer) people who cared about him. Two (three) people who were willing to be a part of Clint's life freely, to be a part of his make shift family. He might have still lost Barbara (may her soul rest in peace), but he still had Coulson (and Natasha and the mysterious rescuer). Besides, Barbara never would want the Messenger of S.H.I.E.L.D. to morn her death. She would want him to live and prank S.H.I.E.L.D. without her and would kick his ass in the afterlife if he didn't.

"I'm not going to let you down, Mockingbird," Clint muttered to himself, reaching out and grabbing one of Coulson's hands. "I'll live my life for the both of us. Maybe even fall in love like you were always talking about too."

Hours later, when Stark was waking Clint up, thrusting a bowl of sugary cereal into his hands (and how did Stark even know his favorite morning food?) and chatting away about how Coulson was going to be moved into a private room in the reconstructed Stark Tower, Clint had thought again to look for the two birds he had seen early. Both of which were still sitting on the back of the chair on the other side Coulson, cuddled together, but between one bite of his cereal and the next, the owl and falcon disappeared. He blinked a few times, clearing the rest of sleep from his mind and shrugged it off as a delusion from his last few days that he wanted to forget.

Forget he did, Clint was so busy with the rest of the cleanup form the Chitauri Invasion, Coulson finally waking up, the blowout from Coulson and the rest of the team when they found out what the World Council tried to put Clint through, and becoming an Avenger in general. He was so busy that he completely forgot about the feathery intruders and he wouldn't remember them for months to come.

However, the Tesseract Secrets were far from done with him and they would manifest themselves once again in the further in the future.

Until then, Clint was content sitting beside Coulson's bed eating a bowl of too sweet cereal and Natasha lurking around the shadows of the room, about to step out and scare Stark speechless to stop his chattering. Unknown to him and the rest of the occupancy, save for one, four dæmons flocked around the room with just as much contentment as their human counterparts'. A peregrine falcon curled around a snowy owl protectively on the back of one of the chairs, chirping soft words of friendship while watching a Russian Blue cat slowly creeping forward getting ready to pounce on a tiny red fox wrapped around Stark's legs.

This was the beginning of Clint's flock, not that he knew of it, but Gwedolen could see it as Lenka pounced mercilessly on Rain tangling the two up in Tony's feet as Natasha stepping out of the shadows and Tony yelped out his surprise.

Life was back normal for the Avengers and their dæmons. For now at least.

* * *

Well, I finally got around to finishing this after a huge writer's block. Hope to hear some feedback since I was trying a new style out.

Riley Lee


End file.
